I may not be posting much today. I'm in a very bad mood. First my daughter's car had to go into the shop and a few calls later from the mechanic also meant a few hundred dollars more coming out of a credit card that is going to be maxed out. My DVD drive is not working on my PC and that means I can't get out some DVD copies of the videos I've done. It also means another repair bill. So excuse me if I feel sorry for myself today. Heck, we all have these kinds of days.
I'm no different than anyone else and right now I have to say that I'm regretting doing what I do because if I had a full time job, our financial situation would be a lot better. I never asked for money from anyone until I decided to do the DVD so that I could cover the cost of making them. Donations didn't even meet what these have cost me already. It never seems to end.
I realize that on the grand scale of things I am virtually no one. I don't know how to advertise what I do because I've been too busy doing what I do. I don't know how people get hundreds of thousands of hits on their videos and I'm lucky just to have a few hits a day. I have no clue how people can be included in Google alerts that come in all the time but mine don't. There was a time when you did a Google on PTSD, my link would pop up in the first two pagers somewhere but now, it won't even show up in 20 pages of results. Maybe I'm just not doing it right or maybe I just don't matter enough. I have no idea.
Today it just doesn't seem worth it at all. I keep wondering what all these years have been all about and searching my heart, I know that it was because I wanted people to know they were not alone and to understand what all of this was all about. Now there are web sites and support groups all over the globe. Maybe there is no point in doing this anymore anyway.
It dawned on me that I'm really depressed over everything going on today when I was reading about other people's problems and suddenly I was thinking "I have my own problems" and I just closed the site, moved on and then went to play a game to chill out.
We all have our own problems. Money trouble, marriage/relationship problems, work problems, health problems. No one is on this earth without any problems at all but maybe that's the point. The people who have very few problems are the ones who never seem to feel connected to someone else's problems. They just go along with their lives as if no one else really matters. There are other people who just think about their own problems and feel as if they should be their only concern. Not a pleasant place to be since right now, I'm apparently there. Maybe I'm burnt out? Maybe I'm just too insignificant to matter?
We have a nation filled with people who feel the same way when no matter what they do, they just don't seem to matter enough. I used to feel sorry for them but now I'm also one of them. When you feel as if you just don't matter, then it's hard to find the value in your existence. It's hard to even try.
Stress is terrible. It really sucks when you have a mountain of stress sitting on your head and pushing the weight of the world crushing you down. You keep looking for a hand to pull you up or take some of the weight off your head, but when it doesn't come you begin to wonder why the hell it's happening to you. You wonder what you did wrong in your life that you feel cursed. When life isn't fair, it's damn near impossible to find hope.
Sure, every once in a while we can catch a glimmer of hope in our life but that soon fades away and reality begins to bite you on the ass all over again. Your stomach turns sour and nothing tastes the way it used to. Your head fills with pressure and you're sure it's going to just explode. Your skin feels achy, as if that's possible but you know the ache is more than in your bones. Deep inside you search for the "what's" of what is possible, what did you do wrong, what can you do to get out of the mess you're in, what you can do to get the right person's attention, what you are not saying when you pray to God who is supposed to know everything. The words of Christ come into your brain and you think about how He said, "knock and it shall be opened" "seek and ye shall find" "ask and ye shall receive" and you wonder what the heck He was talking about because you know you've been knocking, asking and looking for a very long time but none of that seems to happen. Is it because you are not listening or because someone else isn't hearing?
Take all of this and add in flashbacks and nightmares as real as this post on this blog. Real time and parts of a real life. Add in knowing that what's wrong with you could be made better if only the right person was listening and ready, willing and able to help you. Your financial trouble would not be so bad if you got what you thought you were owed. Veterans with PTSD and other wounds know full well they wouldn't need to have help if they were not wounded. It's not about a free ride but about the other end of the deal for their service. Medication and therapy can help with the nightmares and flashbacks. What would help more is knowing that you do matter and someone is listening and caring about what does happen to you. You are not worthless than you were before when you were serving and you were needed and necessary. You also finally find hope again. Hope of better days and not all bad ones. Hope that you can actually feel like you matter enough that someone cared enough to help you up. Worthlessness is replaced by gratefulness and you begin to think that there are reasons to get up out of bed. You begin to reach out your own hand to help someone else because you know what kind of pain they're in and it doesn't matter how many you touch as much as the fact you touched someone.
So who is listening to them? Their families are but they have no power. Blogger are listening but most are just as powerless as I am. Some reporters are listening but too many want to focus on the bill that wants to make sure suicidal veterans don't get their hands on guns or the police academy that let a twisted jerk come out with "cause PTSD" as part of a slogan, than they are interested in the latest non-combat death coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan since there were just two more the other day. Are you listening to them? Do you care? Can you stop paying so much attention to yourself and your own problems to do something about all of this? Call your Senator and your Representative today, call your local officials and get them to come up with what they need today, not just two of three years from now. If we don't there will be a lot more finding the bottom end of the pit and they may never be able to lift their heads out of it again. How low can we let them go before we open the doors, have what they are looking for and ready to give them what they ask for? How much is hope worth to you today?
Put yourself in their place and maybe, just maybe you will be part of the solution instead of being part of the problem. If you are doing nothing then you are part of the problem because too many others are going through their lives the way I'm going through this one day out of thousands of them. We all have days like this as part of just living but imagine what you would be like if everyday was the same as your worse day.
Kathie Costos
www.Namguardianangel.blogspot.com
"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington
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